Process control devices monitor and physically modify operating conditions within a dynamic system or process. Redundancy and increased stability are provided in process control implementations through the use of backup components. In conventional process control implementations, a backup component must be an exact duplicate of its corresponding primary component to provide acceptable redundancy without interruption. This one-to-one redundancy relationship between primary and backup components presents various problems in the field of process control. For example, it increases the cost of the process control system because every primary component requires a backup component. Applications written on these one-to-one redundancies may need to be written specifically to execute on the redundant platform to fully support the redundancy scheme. Further, the one-to-one redundancy relationship may result in nonuse of backup components when their corresponding primary components are operating normally. Increasing the amount of available process control system resources also requires adding both additional primary components and corresponding backup components, which results in increased cost and complexity. Moreover, altering the configuration of control system components in conventional implementations requires laborious rewiring of component connections. In other words, these conventional systems are rigid and unable to adapt to changing system demands.